From the Center of the Struggle:
RISING UP Is A Tasty Tale of Free Soup and Hot Radio in S.F.

How did a relative handful of Food Not Bombs cooks successfully hold off the
entire San Francisco Police Department, City Attorney's office, and Mayor
for twelve years and get hot free food out to hundreds of hungry homeless
people each day? How did a homeless idealist living in a van put together a
renegade radio station that held off the Federal Communications Commission
for nearly a decade and broadcast stories that no one else would touch over
the airwaves? Read Richard Edmondson's new book ‹ Rising Up: Class Warfare
in America from the Streets to the Airwaves ‹ and find out.

Edmondson is the 48-year old founder of San Francisco Liberation Radio
(SFLR), a 40-watt "pirate" station operating at 93.7 FM since 1993. It
covers a radius of 5-10 miles and tens of thousands of potential listeners.
He was also an "illegal" soupslinger with the San Francisco chapter of Food
Not Bombs (FNB).

He, along with nearly 1000 fellow "criminals", went to jail defying the
City's campaign to shut down the group that insisted on "making poverty
visible." Edmondson and his vegetarian vigilantes fed the homeless and the
hungry in front of City Hall and at the entrance to Golden Gate Park week
after week year after year, transforming left-over veggies and day-old
bagels into healthy vegan cuisine.

Last year, after traditionally "leftie" publishers turned him down,
Edmondson self-published a 360 page quality paperback Rising Up: Class
Warfare in America from the Streets to the Airwaves (Librad Press). Rising
Up chronicles the food felons, the radio renegades, the heroic homeless
struggle, and the grim San Francisco class and corporate landscape that
produced these movements. It is also a moving and expressive personal
journal of his involvement with FNB and SFLR.

Here you will learn about the death of Marcelino Corniel, a homeless
African-American man, at the hands of the Washington police (p.39) , a handy
list of components to start your own micropower radio (p. 110), the homeless
version of O Sole Mio (p. 147), and much of the text of the "FCC Klutzes vs.
Grandma Denney" comedy classic (p. 141) ‹ plus the saga of the rise of free
food and free radio.

The Food Not Bombs idea prompted the formation of non-violent anarchist
consensus groups in over 175 cities and towns through the world. Nowhere was
the struggle so heated as in San Francisco, a city with a misleading liberal
reputation, a largely treacherous mainstream media, and an inveterately
corrupt police force and judicial system.

From 1990-1993, Edmondson braved truncheon and pepper spray each day to get
bagels and rice out to hungry homeless people in downtown S.F. and in the
Haight-Ashbury while living "illegally" in his van with his dog Elsa. I must
have met Edmondson in the summer of 1990 at a well-attended "sleep-in"
protest near the Civic Center Park fountain, though we only realized it
years afterwards. Coming up from Santa Cruz with activist Linda Edwards to
provide "jail bodies," she and I were hauled off to the paddywagon in "guest
arrests;" Edmondson went on to take regular abuse as a mainstay of FNB.

Throughout those years, Edmondson, as a tight friend with FNB co-founder and
court jester Keith McHenry, was close to the center of the whirlwind.
Police, D.A., and media closely targeted McHenry in their
capture-the-carrots campaigns against the guerilla grubmasters. Edmondson
chopped vegetables, distributed flyers, and served soup in the face of armed
police terror to drive FNB out of town or at least out of sight. Even the
sympathetic weekly alternative press couldn't report the beatings,
bagelnappings, salad-dumpings and vehicle seizures as fast as they happened.

In 1993 Edmondson started San Francisco Liberation Radio (SFLR). SFLR & its
bigger sister Free Radio Berkeley sparked a micropower revolution across the
country. Hundreds of grassroots independent "pirate" radio stations sprang
up, "illegal" but cheap to run (frequently under $1000) because they
broadcast at wattages less than 100. Taboo topics and previously excluded
community groups ‹ punk, queer, black, Hispanic, fundamentalist, rural, or
racist. Once-censored perspectives ranging from rabid right to radical
left-were suddenly on the air in a dialogue with their neighborhoods.

San Francisco makes sleeping or eating in one's vehicle at night a crime ‹
only one of the many anti-homeless laws and policies that makes this
"liberal" City one of the harshest in the state, perhaps in the nation. When
this 1971 anti-hippie law proved to be insufficient to stop FNB, San
Francisco's Recreation and Parks Commission criminalized serving free food
in the parks by eliminating the permit process to do so. The City Attorney
then got a permanent injunction barring FNB from serving food anywhere in
the City and County of San Francisco. FNB shrugged and served food anyway.

Rising Up begins with a preface that exposes the sloppy misreporting and
unconscious bigotry of the national media around police treatment of
homeless people in San Francisco. He carefully analyzes the November 1998
Washington Post coverage around Mayor Willie Brown's shopping cart
confiscation and jail-or-forced-treatment-for-drunks proposals. In a book
that exposes many myths, Edmondson methodically debunks the bogus "even
liberal San Francisco is tired of the homeless" stereotype.

San Francisco, through four bigoted mayors ‹ Feinstein, Agnos, Jordan, and
Brown ‹ has never faltered in its low-intensity war against the visible poor
with a police pogrom against the homeless that has been by turns
indifferent, abusive, violent, and even accessory to murder. Edmondson's
analysis of the 1998 "vampire stalker" ‹ who slashed the throats of four
homeless victims in one month, shows how police deliberately delayed
announcing that the killer was targeting the homeless in such a fashion as
to unnecessarily endanger more homeless people. As a wry humane voice from
the street (though he is now housed and in fact hosts SFLR in his living
room), Edmondson describes battle-by-battle the City's class war against the
homeless, the cold, the sick, and the poor on the front lines.

Rising Up exposes the San Francisco Chronicle, the Examiner, and the local
TV stations with their shmooze-the-police and smear-the-homeless bias.
Institutional discrimination against the poor brings to mind the violence of
segregation in the South. Edmondson describes in detail the City's
elaborate, exhaustive, and phony "get a permit" demands on FNB followed by
the brutal and unprovoked police assaults on FNB and Keith McHenry. For the
first time we can read about the mind-boggling prejudice and corruption of
the local courts-chillingly reminiscent of southern Courts ducking
segregation and lynching issues. Edmondson's is the first extended treatment
of judicial ratification of SFPD's daily and systematic institutional
violence against homeless people and their soupslinging allies in FNB.

Out of these struggles and his boundless idealism, Edmondson turned to the
radical technology developed by Stephen Dunifer in Berkeley for cheap low
wattage micro-power radio. He founded SFLR, community-based people's radio,
to put out stories too hot for the hothouse media to handle. His book
overflows with untold tales.

Edmondson's account of his personal involvement with the villains and heroes
of the struggle is by turns gripping, amusing, and thought-provoking. He
names the bad cops' names. His determination to tell where the bodies are
buried seems equal parts payback, deterrence, and the traditional passion
for truth which puts real journalists in the way of trouble. Mild-mannered
and self-effacing in person, Edmondson is taking real risks with this book
since he is still at the center of SFLR, with a weekly program that focuses
on homeless issues. He risks his own personal liberty and in theory
everything he owns, if the FCC ever decides to play hardball and move in to
enforce the $100,000 fine for "unlicensed broadcasting".

When I recently interviewed Edmondson he explained that he is but one of a
number of people on the Board of Directors of SFLR. Their group has "gone
through the legal process" in search of an approved Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) license with the aim of showing an intent to be legal if
the FCC stormtroopers ever come knocking. SFLR, however, can't get legal
under the FCC's Catch-22 rules (a) licenses are not being given out in urban
areas, and (b) licenses are not being given to those previously operating an
"illegal" radio station-to name just two reasons. Edmondson summarizes the
tangled history of the FCC and the decline of public access to radio in
Chapter 7 ‹ "People vs. Government."

Rising Up chronicles "pirates versus FCC" with the same meticulous,
methodical, and ironic pen that delivered the "homeless versus police" and
the "FNB versus bureaucrats". Edmondson illuminates FCC's role as a pawn of
the National Association of Broadcaster (NAB) and runs us through its early
history stamping out independent radio. He returns repeatedly to larger
issues of class and power and to free radio's significance in the struggle
to restore human rights. Since knowledge is power, cheap and accessible
information gives the community the tools long denied by government and
corporate censorship. His description of his hide-and-seek pirate
broadcasting in the San Francisco hills with police and FCC agents on his
tail is funny and frantic.

Like a camera that zooms in and out, Edmondson covers Mayor Jordan's Matrix
program; PG & E's successful power grab in San Francisco; and the emerging
national struggle for a legalization of micropower radio. The struggle was
lost at the paper/legal level when the NAB and National Public Radio
successfully pressured Congress into passing and Clinton into signing the
Oxley bill in December, but continues on the day-to-day/broadcasting level
each time a micropower transmitter beams out a signal.

Edmondson's story of free radio, free food, and homeless people is
particularly appealing to me because it draws together all the individual
incidents about which I've written detailed flyers over the years. As an
out-of-town "guest" supporter of FNB who served a month in jail in 1996, I'm
pleased to see Rising Up complete the FNB odyssey that I so often wanted to
put down on paper.

Edmondson's professional radio work on SFLR (which goes out to other pirate
stations) rivals that of any "mainstream" radio production company. A
more-pointed, less-diplomatic, less-sanitized Stan Freberg or Tom Lehrer,
Edmondson has done some fine satirical work, His collaboration with
composer, singer, and Berkeley activist Carol Denney, as well as Jo Swanson,
Richard Cicerone, in the much-missed Jolly Roger Comedy Troupe skits, whose
production he describes.

Much of FNB's history has a zany absurdist edge to it ‹ picture lines of
armed and helmeted police, truncheons drawn, separating homeless people from
buckets of vegetarian soup and platters of bagels. FNB, we learn from Rising
Up, actually began as satire ‹ a mock soup-line with real soup in front of
the stockholder's meeting of the First National Bank of Boston in 1980 to
protest its financing of Seabrook's Nuclear Power Plant. To everyone's
surprise, homeless people gobbled up the props, launching FNB destiny ‹ to
feed people in earnest, even in the teeth of fascist police, politicians,
and judges.

I have some criticisms of Rising Up as well. The index is completely garbled
and unusable, hopefully to be corrected in an updated 2nd edition. There is
little mention of Homes Not Jails nor the struggle to secure the San
Francisco Presidio, abandoned Army property, for homeless use as required by
the Stuart-McKinney Act.

I would have liked to see Edmondson maintain and broaden his focus on class
struggle by jumping across the Bay to discuss the Berkeley struggles around
People's Park involving homeless use of space, homeless food serving
operations, and harassment of the homeless on Telegraph Avenue through
Sitting Bans and other class warfare legislation. Once there he could have
touched on the tremendously-successful Oakland Union of the Homeless, which
forcibly occupied abandoned buildings and then successfully transferred them
to homeless use. Perhaps this can be volume two.

Edmondson also tends to dilute and disperse his tale by introducing other
issues such as capital punishment, AIDS as a possible vaccine by-product,
slaughterhouse abuses, and police violence against the public. He does put
these issues in class perspective and brings them out as stories censored in
the establishment media but explored by micropower radio.

Edmondson's book has, along with its rich digressions into the history of
the FCC and the arcane court struggle of FNB, a personal spine to it. It is
the chronicle of his involvement, his passions, and his reflections in San
Francisco, which led him to join FNB and to start SFLR. It is in his own
testimony, thoughtful, reflective, ironic, and at times impassioned. .

At the end Edmondson tries to make theological sense out of it all, again
leaving me behind, but perhaps being true to himself and struggling to
answer that endlessly frustrating question that people ahead of their time
confront each day: where is the enduring value of what we do, in an
endlessly prolonged battle against authorities who have all the power,
propaganda, and wealth on their side? Where is our victory when SFPD are
citing or arresting twice as many homeless people for "sleepcrime" as they
were five years ago? How can we take courage when there has been no
significant expansion of micropower radio stations in California in the last
three years?

Part of the answer to that question is the book itself. That Edmondson has
completed this hidden history of the homeless civil rights struggle in San
Francisco weaving it together with the FNB story and the rise of pirate
radio gives me a sense of pride, hope, and satisfaction. Edmondson's
three-tiered tale makes us all wiser and puts back on the public record a
rich story buried by the big media. In a very real sense it gives meaning
and recognition to the suffering of thousands of homeless people in San
Francisco over the last decade.

Buy Rising Up for $20 directly from him at SFLR, 750 La Playa, Box 852, S.F.
94121.. Get it on line at Amazon.com. Find it in a bookstore like Modern
Times, City Lights, Bound Together Books, & The Booksmith. Request it from
your local library-it's an invaluable resource, since no other book covers
the history that it does.

Carol Denney's hilarous satirical newsletter Pepper Spray Times can be
obtained by subscription from her at 1970 San Pablo Ave. #4 , Berkeley, Ca.
94702 or by e-mail at cdenney@ic.org or visit her website at
www.caroldenney.com.

Robert Norse

Robert Norse is the only person ever convicted of serving free food to
homeless people in San Francisco. He served a month of a three month
sentence for the "crime" of giving a bagel to a hungry woman.

 

Homelessness among Veterans

Members of the US Armed Forces are expected to leave no comrade behind on
the field of battle, and yet we see countless former soldiers suffering the
lingering effects of war left behind on the battlefields of the streets. A
report from the US Department of Veterans Affairs' (the VA) Community
Homeless Assessment, Local Education, and Networking Group for Veterans,
issued in May 2000, estimates that in 1999 there were 344,983 homeless
veterans, that's up 34% from the 1988 estimate of 256,872 homeless veterans.

Homeless veterans are a dramatically under-served population, suffering
disproportionately from a variety of health and social problems including
high morbidity, substance abuse and alcoholism, mental health issues
including post traumatic stress disorder, unemployment, chronic health
conditions, and physical disability. Veterans are homeless for many of the
same reasons non-veterans are homeless, including extreme shortage of
affordable housing, poverty, and lack of support networks. However, veterans
comprise an unduly high percentage of the nation's homeless population ‹
fully one quarter. Moreover, male veterans are more likely to become
homeless than their non-veteran peers: 33% of homeless men are veterans;
whereas, veterans make up only 13% of the general male population.

This is an aging population. The average age is about 50 years old (46% of
homeless vets are 45 years or older, compared to 20% of non-vets)  ‹ nearly
half of homeless veterans served during the Vietnam Era. (Others served
during peacetime and during the US's many periods of armed conflict, World
War II, Korea, Grenada, Panama, the Gulf War, and the "drug wars" in South
America.) As homeless veterans age ‹ and the lasting effects of extreme
isolation, poverty, and homelessness become more entrenched and wear on the
individual's physical and mental well being - the need for medical service
and stability becomes even more critical.

Possibly the most frequent question I hear when I tell of my work at a
veterans' rights organization concerns perceived services from the VA. Most
assume that the VA cares for all veterans in need. This is not the case. The
VA itself estimates that nationwide there at least 250,000 homeless veterans
‹ and the VA provides services to just 40,000. Clearly, the VA falls short
on serving homeless vets.

While the VA has obviously not "solved the problem," it does a lot, and part
of our role as a service provider includes ensuring that veterans can make
use of what limited services the VA does offer, and pushing for the VA to
create and enhance desperately needed services.

As with many federal agencies, the VA's budget for homeless services has
shrunk, and the VA health care system has shifted from a hospital-based
model to an outpatient, managed care model. The result: a reduction in
residential capacity for substance abuse treatment and inpatient psychiatric
care. Both are absolutely critical areas of need for homeless vets. In San
Francisco, the VA has no residential substance abuse treatment beds and
fewer than a dozen locked beds on the psychiatric ward. In fact, the total
residential capacity for substance abuse treatment in the VA system for all
of San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Marin, and Sonoma
counties is roughly 130.

In spite of the high number of homeless veterans in San Francisco ‹ an
estimated 2,500 veterans are homeless ‹ there are only 100 veteran-specific
permanent housing slots (at the recently opened Veterans Academy, operated
by Swords to Plowshares).

Among the service modalities to improve care for homeless veterans, for
which some veterans' service providers are advocating are:

€  Community-Based Service Delivery Model:
Veterans' service organizations, using a vets-helping-vets approach, have
demonstrated high success rates when providing housing in conjunction with
support services, including substance abuse treatment, especially when they
work within the local community and with state and federal agencies,
including the VA, to bring to bear a wide range of services.

€  More Housing:
To state the obvious, access to safe and affordable housing is the most
pressing and immediate need. Service providers have banded together to work
in collaboration to increase supportive housing options for homeless
veterans - through expanding capacity and encouraging community partnerships
that benefit homeless vets. At the state level, the California Association
of Veterans' Service Agencies is working with legislators to this end. The
National Coalition for Homeless Veterans promotes the efforts of some 200+
locally based service providers, including Swords to Plowshares in San
Francisco and Operation Dignity in Alameda County. Service providers, with
some hard work, can get access to create housing models on under-utilized VA
Medical Center property and at base closures, including Treasure Island in
SF. (Through efforts coordinated by the Treasure Island Homeless Development
Initiative, five pioneer agencies have opened programs on the Island, for
about 450 people. The groups include Swords to Plowshares, Rubicon, Haight
Ashbury, Walden House, and Catholic Charities.)

€  Increase Funding for Income Advocacy:
Income Advocacy combines legal and social services to assist at-risk
veterans to secure or upgrade income benefits and healthcare by accessing
federal benefits through the VA. Disabled veterans are entitled to these
benefits, but the benefits (both monetary and health care) are not
automatic. In most cases, claimants cannot pay for legal representation, and
the process can be lengthy and convoluted ‹ extremely difficult for a
disabled homeless vet to complete on his or her own. For disabled veterans
and their families, a stable income increases chances to obtain safe housing
and appropriate healthcare. Additionally, securing federal benefits can
provide cost savings to local governments through reducing emergency care
costs and local welfare benefits.

While too many vets experience isolation and transitory lifestyles without
access to basic needs, increasingly compounded by the wear and tear of
aging, limited options that can help homeless veterans do exist. By
increasing our awareness of the un-met needs specific to homeless veterans,
and by promoting knowledge to expand networks that serve veterans, we can
help vets to have a fair chance to bring about an exit from homelessness.



WILL TODAY BE THE DAY?

On any given day in San Francisco, homeless people are having their worldly
possessions confiscated and destroyed by the San Francisco Police
Department, the Department of Public Works and the Recreation and Parks
Department.

On countless occasions, with precision and stealthy silence, these City
Departments have managed to sneak up on homeless people's property while
they attended a noon meal or a Doctor's appointment and plunder what turns
out to be homeless people's sole possessions in life. These Departments also
take homeless people's belongings when people are present, stealing people's
belongings right in front of their faces, in blatant violation of several
State and local laws.

The Coalition on Homelessness, in an attempt to curb this wave of sometimes
clandestine and most often overt activity, has proposed a new City Ordinance
that would require the City to give a 24-hour written notice to homeless
people before impounding their property.

In these months of bitter winter winds and rain homeless people are losing
their warm blankets and sleeping bags to a band of City pirates, subjecting
them to elements that threaten their very existence. Also of particular
concern is the number of homeless people who have had their medications
seized and destroyed, worsening severe health conditions such as heart
problems. What will it take before the City reconsiders its stance on this
issue?

In the past it has been an unofficial policy of The Department of Public
Works that during the winter months it would not confiscate homeless
people's warm clothing and blankets, but it seems that with considerable arm
twisting from S.F.P.D. ‹ D.P.W. has abandoned this policy.

The loss of homeless people's property has been the topic of conversation
not only amongst the homeless and their advocates but numerous community
groups around the city as well. E-mails monitored by the Coalition on
Homelessness from the South of Market Residents' Association show a
pervasive menace has begun to rear its ugly head.

Some members of SOMARA run a program called S.O.S. where homeless people are
encouraged to sweep up areas in which they reside. Also prevalent amongst
SOMARA's ranks is a group of residents who feel the solution to the
so-called homeless problem is to publish the phone numbers of the S.F.P.D.
and the Department of Public Works. This is a mean-spirited attempt to
deprive homeless people of their property in the hope that they will
disappear, so certain SOMA residents and businesses won't have to be
reminded that severe poverty is prevalent in our society.

In the South of Market, as well as across the city, calling the police is
not the solution. In fact, as police get more involved, problems increase
exponentially. Police often charge homeless people with minor crimes of
trespassing or blocking the sidewalk, usually when no law has actually been
broken, in their efforts to push people out of neighborhoods. Homeless
people are brought to police stations for processing and sit in holding
cells while missing opportunities for food and employment and vital
appointments for public benefits and medical care.

Calling the police, the Department of Public Works or Rec. & Park many times
results in homeless people's property being illegally thrown away. In
practice the San Francisco Police Department (and often DPW) does not
distinguish between litter and homeless people's personal property. People
who are the most marginalized amongst us with little to begin with and
little if no income must start from square one every time their property is
taken.

While the police and DPW can scatter homeless people about the City and
throw their only earthly possessions into trash compactors, they can not
find anyone a shelter bed, substance abuse services, mental health services,
or affordable housing.

Think twice before calling in the police and DPW to sweep homeless people
out of sight; think instead on creative solutions, approaches that involve
your homeless neighbors.

It's time we sought solutions to relieve the stress caused by this failed
City policy, such as requiring the posting of a 24-hour notice before
property is designated as abandoned. This is a much-needed first step. How
would you feel if you had to contend with the thought:

"Will today be the day that I lose everything I own?"


Ron Rucker

 

 

San Francisco's STREET SHEET Online Edition

A PUBLICATION OF THE COALITION ON HOMELESSNESS,   SAN FRANCISCO

June, 2001

San Francisco's STREET SHEET E-Zine

JUNE, 2001

SELL-OUT ISSUE
____________________________________________________
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CONTENTS:

0   € FOREWORD
        by chance martin

1   € A SECRET IN THE NEWS: THE COUNTRY¹S PERMANENT POOR
        by Ben H. Bagdikian

2   € Poverty, the Law, and the Voices of People with Mental Illnesses
        by Marykate Connor

3   € Two Flew Over the Cuckoo¹s Nest
        by Dr. Loren Mosher

4   € United Nations Plaza is Now Under Martial Law
        by COH Civil Rights Workgroup

5   € WILLIE BROWN¹S CIVIC PLAYGROUND
        by Salim McCarron

6   € Fight The Cuts! A Draft Housing Platform for America
        by COH Housing Workgroup

7   € The Day of a Homeless Family
        by Bianca Henry

8   € Shelter Redesign Update
        by SHOUT!

9   € THE LOOK
        by Judy D.

10  € SAVE OUR SERVICES IN THE BAYVIEW HUNTERS POINT AND TENDERLOIN!
        by Diana Valentine

12  € B L A
        by SHEIK NUH WASHINGTON

ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒ
¡EDICION POPULAR EN ESPANOL!
ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒ

13  € UN MOVIMIENTO DE JOVENES EN CONTRA DE LAS CARCELES SALE VICTORIOSO
        por Libros No Barras

14  € ¡Se Forman Enlaces en la Lucha en contra del Desplazamiento!
        por Jennifer Welch

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0   €
FOREWORD

Dear Trent,

Man, it's been a long time since we've talked.

Today I was walking through Civic Center, not too far from some of your
favorite haunts and camping spots. The whole place was festooned with
posters and banners announcing the _major_ San Francisco society event of
the season -- the annual Black & White Ball. Normally a gala for rich folks
wouldn't merit much of my attention, but then the date triggered an
inescapable association.

This year's Black & White Ball will be held on June 2, the first anniversary
of the evening you died homeless.

You sure as hell managed to hurt everybody who ever gave a shit about you.
Bum luck (no pun intended), I guess. I know you didn't mean to check out,
but it doesn't make it any easier when you surface in my daily thoughts, or
when someone else brings you up, or... and... whatever. I'm sure you know
the story. It ain't about nothing but life and death.

I finally got past blaming myself for lacking the magickal capacity to
predict, and thereby intervene, in your fatal overdose. The part that really
fucked me up was that your death fit the classic M.O. for heroin overdose
among experienced users to a "T": 1) you were using alone; 2) following a
fairly long period of abstinence, and; 3) you were too drunk to make a good
judgement about adding heroin to the mix.

Anyway, you could really appreciate the present irony -- all these rich
fucks attired in finery costing enough to keep an average homeless family in
rent for half a year or more partying their privileged asses off within the
same visual circumference that you last witnessed before you left this
world. Every time I reflect on the fact that you last breathed beneath a
tree across the street from City Hall -- that the gilded tourist spectacle
that masquerades as our official seat of government was probably your last
living vision -- it still makes my heart ache.

Yeah, guys the likes of we are far too caustic to find comfortable
acceptance in the comfort found in the  middle of anybody's anything. Damn.
Such is life.

I even got all excited about trying to organize a medically supervised safe
injection room here in San Francisco, so that the next time somebody like
you or me has the money and the urge, someone can make an intervention
before someone fucks up as tragically as you did.

Yeah, buddy. I know: "oh in whose backyard shall we position THAT?"

And I really do miss you, even today in this moment. There's so much going
on that's crying for your inspiration. You meant more to us than you ever
knew... that's why I'm telling you now.

The City even put up a security fence around the strangled patch of green
where you finally found your peace. It makes it harder to place a fitting
memorial, but we are creative. We must be.

We haven't forgotten you, Trent Hayward.


Oh, yeah... one more thing. Song lyrics for Trent:

HEROIN

I don't know just where I'm going
But I'm gonna try for the kingdom, if I can
'Cause it makes me feel like I'm a man
When I put a spike into my vein
And I'll tell ya, things aren't quite the same
When I'm rushing on my run
And I feel just like Jesus' son
And I guess that I just don't know
And I guess that I just don't know

I have made the big decision
I'm gonna try to nullify my life
'Cause when the blood begins to flow
When it shoots up the dropper's neck
When I'm closing in on death
And you can't help me not, you guys
And all you sweet girls with all your sweet silly talk
You can all go take a walk
And I guess that I just don't know
And I guess that I just don't know

I wish that I was born a thousand years ago
I wish that I'd sail the darkened seas
On a great big clipper ship
Going from this land here to that
In a sailor's suit and cap
Away from the big city
Where a man can not be free
Of all of the evils of this town
And of himself, and those around
Oh, and I guess that I just don't know
Oh, and I guess that I just don't know

Heroin, be the death of me
Heroin, it's my wife and it's my life
Because a mainer to my vein
Leads to a center in my head
And then I'm better off and dead
Because when the smack begins to flow
I really don't care anymore
About all the Jim-Jim's in this town
And all the politicians makin' crazy sounds
And everybody puttin' everybody else down
And all the dead bodies piled up in mounds

'Cause when the smack begins to flow
Then I really don't care anymore
Ah, when the heroin is in my blood
And that blood is in my head
Then thank God that I'm as good as dead
Then thank your God that I'm not aware
And thank God that I just don't care
And I guess I just don't know
And I guess I just don't know

Lou Reed


and I guess that I just don't know...

peace,

chance
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A SECRET IN THE NEWS: THE COUNTRY¹S PERMANENT POOR

It can be the best of times or the worst of times, but whether in prosperity
or recession, there is one constant in the United States economy ‹ the
richest country in the world has maintained a permanent class of Americans
who are poor. That is not an accident. It is maintained by official action
as deliberate as Alan Greenspan¹s protection of the prosperity of banks and
stock markets. In this case it is the scandalous maintenance by new laws and
regulations, new tax codes, and special multi-billion tax waivers for
favored giant corporations. Those in this permanent class are not the
momentarily unemployed. Most of them shift jobs. Or are alcoholics, addicts
and handicapped people. Most of them work. Neither are they inevitable as
temporarily unlucky in a world of global economic change. Long before the
³new economy² and after it, none of our Western European peers of affluent
nations has sustained a permanent class of the poor like one in the U.S.
Those other countries have social policies that prevent it.

When confronted with persistent poverty in the world¹s richest country, the
American mainstream print and electronic media seem to take as their mandate
the Biblical words from Matthew, ³The poor ye will have always.² They do
this with little concern that poverty in the midst of plenty in the world¹s
richest country is an American exception among all advanced societies. (The
U.S. is the richest in Gross Domestic Product and in per capita income is
second only to Luxembourg.)

The news media may protest that they do cover the poor. And in one sense,
they do. But these are typically isolated stories about a hard-luck family
in a disaster area, or profile of the plucky Midwest downsized manager
flipping burgers at McDonald¹s  ‹- sympathetic features but depicted as
isolated cases. Reported only rarely and obscurely is why the United States,
among all its affluent peer countries, retains a poor class year in and year
out.

Given the symbiotic relationship between our national politicians and the
main news media, that media failure has consequences. What the main media
ignore, political leaders know they can safely ignore. The needy appear only
at election time in stereotyped rhetoric and campaign photo ops. The empty
rhetoric without subsequent media follow-up has deepened the comfortable
assumption that in America poverty is an unavoidable act of God. When a
government report documents one element in permanent poverty, like the 1997
HUD 1997 document on the unrelenting rental housing crisis, it passes out of
print in one day, not followed up with emphatic subsequent stories, which is
the process that produces political pressures for action. Or the mainstream
news relates it to the ³millionaire-market² housing scene in San Francisco
Bay or midtown Manhattan, not the same crisis for average families in
suburbs of Chicago and rural Kansas and thousands of other cities and towns.
Permanent poverty may have been inexorable in biblical times, when there
really was inadequate food, inefficient use of arable land, rigid class
systems, slavery and serfdom. But today¹s world has enough food for
everyone, and affluent countries like the United States have enough rich
resources to guarantee their populations enough decent food, housing,
universal health care, jobs and pensions. Most of our peer countries do
exactly that. Only the United States has chosen not to rid itself of a
permanent poor.

The United States is unique among the world¹s advanced industrial
societies-France, Germany, the United Kingdom, for example. It has retained
this dubious exception for so long ‹ almost a half century ‹ that a poverty
class in this country is now seen as normal, inevitable, and, with parallel
media unconcern, consequently invisible.

Who are ³the American poor² and are they really poor?

Government statistics periodically adjust the poverty level in the country
to reflect changes in the cost of living. In 1999, for example, a family of
three with a household income of $13,880 or less was classified as living in
poverty. Of the 32 million Americans in poverty, 72 percent were in
families. These include one of every five American children. These are not
poor because they lack Cuisinarts and BMWs. They are poor because they lack
enough food, shelter, and access to other elementary living conditions in
any modern society.

Why do we permit this when our peer nations do not? The answers are not
mysterious: official housing policies, deliberate shifting of national
wealth to the top through destruction of the national progressive income
tax, mammoth special favors for corporations, and cynical treatment of the
national minimum wage. Why do the mainstream news media share the blame?

A dramatic demonstration of media¹s guilty involvement occurred thirty years
ago. When, suddenly, as though from nowhere, we had homeless families living
in the streets. For national civic life it was the dead canary in the coal
mine. We know why the canaries die in the mines: it is a warning of methane
gas kills sensitive canaries before it kills human beings. The dead canary
of structural American poverty was the sudden appearance of the homeless in
the early 1980s.

In the 1980s, the number of poor Americans began climbing noticeably. By
1998-1999, the average poor child was further below the poverty line than he
or she was in 1979.

The 1979-1980s change tells something crucial. By the mid-1980s, seemingly
out of nowhere, for the first time since the Great Depression, large numbers
of individuals and families were living in the streets. ³The homeless,² is a
social phenomenon usually associated with countries like Bangladesh, but has
now survived as a visible urban fixture in this richest of countries.

Emblematic is the failure of the big newspapers and broadcasters to search
out the source of the new homeless when they first appeared in the 1980s.
Most often, the media refer to the homeless who are alcoholics, drug
addicted, or mentally ill. But we always had alcoholics, addicts and the
mentally ill before without large numbers of families living in the streets.
Something radical had changed.

A hint of what¹s changed is that homeless people ‹ a minority of the total
poor ‹ are homeless even though, according to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, 64 percent of them have jobs, some of them two jobs, but they
are still poor by government standards.

No affluent democracy has been able to house its low-wage families by
depending on the private real estate industry. Government-subsidized
low-cost housing has been found indispensable if all are to be housed in
minimally decent homes and apartments. Before 1979, the United States
subsidized 200,000 such low-income units a year. In the early 1980s, in the
new fervor for shifting everything possible to the free market, subsidized
low-cost housing subsidies were cut by 92 percent. That is the central
reason we suddenly had a permanent beggar class and families living in the
streets. Few readers or TV news watchers were ever told the basic reasons
why our homeless happened ³out of nowhere.²

Why the media¹s strange lack of curiosity? It was part of the main media¹s
gingerly treatment of basic causes of social ills whose remedies might
involve an increase in taxes. On the contrary, the media generally celebrate
the opposite ‹ whatever reduces taxes. Explaining the ³dead canary² of the
suddenly-homeless might have stimulated renewed appropriations for
subsidized low-cost housing-taxes for the benefit of the most politically
powerless group in the electorate.

There are other contributing forces to persistent homelessness. Earlier it
had been found that most of the institutionalized mentally ill were improved
if they were released to local treatment centers in their home cities and
received counseling at local treatment centers. So mental hospitals were
effectively emptied, saving millions of tax dollars. But even more taxes
were saved by reneging on the promise to shift the saved money to local
treatment centers.

The majority of the poor are not mentally ill. They are mentally sound,
non-addicted individuals and families. But they remain poor. According to
the Department of Housing and Urban Affairs (HUD), from 1985 to 1993 the
private market for affordable housing dropped another 20 percent, and,
according to the Journal of Housing and Community Development, only 33
percent of Americans eligible by law for federal housing actually can find
such housing.

The Journal¹s December, 1997 issue reported, ³With affordable housing out of
reach for growing numbers of low-income Americans, the housing crisis can
only be expected to worsen... the recent actions by Congress have further
disenfranchised an already disadvantaged segment of the American family.² In
1995, there were 1.3 million low-cost housing units available for 2.6
million low-income renters, as shown by a survey by the Center on Budget and
Policy Priorities. Yet, in that same time period, according to the National
Association of Realtors, the median price for a single family house rose 45
percent. With low-cost rental apartments unattractive to the real estate
industry and failure of the needed government subsidies for what the private
market prefers to reject, the ³mystery² of both the homeless and the
impoverished 32,000,000 Americans is not very mysterious.

In addition, the poor have been paying steadily higher percentages of their
income on rent-more than 50 percent of their disposable income. In a
Catch-22, from the remaining half or less must come other indispensable
human needs, like food, clothing and payment of their unfair burden of the
most regressive taxes.

Underlying the issue is the shameful phenomenon of a radical shift of
national personal wealth from the bottom 80 percent of the population to the
top 20 percent, with the lion¹s share of that going to the top 1 percent.
The fact that such a gap exists gets into American news occasionally, but as
a routine statistic, like the corn crop in Kansas.

The United States has the widest gap in the world between its very rich and
its unrich. The gap has grown year after year, neither by accident nor by
talent and hard work by the super-rich. American workers are unique in their
low share of their employers¹ revenues compared to our counterpart
countries. The typical American CEO receives 34 times the typical American
factory worker who now earns less (in absolute dollar terms) than hourly
workers in Japan, Germany, or Switzerland. The multi-million- and
billion-dollar executive compensations show no relationship to the
performance of those corporate executives, according to our most prominent
authority on executive compensation, Graef Crystal, formerly of the
University of California at Berkeley and now with Bloomberg News. He has
said, ³It gets worse and worse... It¹s absolutely sick.²

The massive shift of American wealth to the top has been reported in the
media, but without the sense of outrage and alarm that would puzzle a
Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, Franklin Roosevelt, or any number of
political and media leaders of past eras. Though the main media attitude
toward the poor seems to take comfort from the Book of Matthew¹s resignation
to their plight, the media seem less interested in another biblical
reference, ³It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle,
than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God...²

Other affluent countries lack the size and causes of the permanent American
poor. The answer is simple. The other rich countries have housing,
employment, pension, and tax policies that prevent it. The overall answer is
an inexcusable fantasy aided and abetted by our major media, newspapers
that, for example, have ³Correction Columns² for errors like printing the
wrong middle initial of a politicians. The media fantasy, aided and abetted
by politicians, have convinced the people of the United States of a
falsehood, namely, that we are a brutally over-taxed country. The truth is
that of all the affluent democracies, Americans are the lowest taxed in the
world, including the sum of all local, state, and national taxes.
Consequently, when this fantasy is shrill in every political campaign ‹
promising lower taxes as a dire necessity ‹ it is accepted as an urgently
needed rescue of that beleaguered population, the very rich. Though the main
media love to find culprits in social problems, on this they practice
selective amnesia. For more than half a century, the share of federal taxes
paid by corporations has been dropping radically and shifted onto families
and individuals. In 1940, corporations paid 40 percent of federal revenues.
By 2000 it had dropped to 12 percent.

Guess who pays for that shift?

Even though money supply and national wealth have grown, in 1955 corporate
taxes paid for 6 percent of our Gross Domestic Product but now pay only 2.5
percent. Except for Japan, U.S. income taxes as 34 percent of GDP are lowest
among industrialized nations. The rate in Canada is 36 percent, Germany 39
percent, Switzerland 50 percent. It is not coincidental that most of those
other countries have universal health care, guaranteed housing and more
generous social benefits than United States.

The top federal income tax rate for the richest Americans was once 70
percent, though people that rich hired the best accountants and tax
shelters, so few paid anything like the top bracket. The top rate in 2000
had dropped to 39 percent, and in practice it is closer to 33 percent, and
few in that theoretical bracket pay that much for the same reasons. Now the
Bush Administration wishes to drop it to 25. The country¹s progressive
income tax is now close to dead.

However, some taxes do go up. The loss of our federal progressive income tax
has year-by-year shifted basic American taxes to the most regressive kind in
which the poor pay more of their income than do the rich. In the resulting
shift of taxes from Washington income tax responsibilities to states,
counties and cities, these jurisdictions have resorted to sales taxes, the
most regressive kind. Here, of course, the poor pay the most in terms of
disposable income. In 1995, according to Citizens for Tax Justice and The
Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the lowest 20 percent of family
incomes paid 12.5 percent of all state and local taxes (property, sales, and
fees) while the top 20 percent of families paid 8.5 percent of their family
incomes. A 7.5 percent sales tax on a minimum wage worker represents a
significant percentage of that person¹s income. The same percentage sales
tax on a millionaire is a negligible percentage of total income, which is
why, in the need for revenues, corporations and the rich insist on sales
taxes instead of higher federal income taxes. The final insult to the poor
is the minimum wage. Corporations and the rich fight every move for an
increase, the way they fought against creation of the minimum wage in the
first place. In 1970 the minimum wage was worth 29 percent more in real
terms than it was in 2000. According to the Economic Policy Institute, in
1970 minimum wage workers were living above the poverty level. In 1998, only
19 percent were.

A standard objection that it will reduce the number of jobs available, or
force small businesses into failure, has no basis in reality. The Institute
says a raised minimum wage has never resulted in significant reductions in
jobs or closed businesses.

Objectors to Minimum Wage have always raised the image of denying the
after-school teen-ager learning how to be productive. But in 1999, 71
percent of people earning the minimum wage were adults.

If the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped steadily for twenty years it
would be front page and leading broadcast news day after day until
government took action. That 32 million of our population have their
housing, food, and clothing ³index² drop steadily for more than 30 years is
worth only an occasional feature story about an individual or statistical
fragments in back pages of our most influential news organizations. An
unnecessary poverty class is shameful in ³the leader of the free world² and
the richest one at that. A fraction of the media¹s daily attention to the
Dow, the media¹s role in creating the myth of overtaxed Americans and the
notion of an inexorable American poor class, make our mainstream papers and
broadcasters a party to a cruel and unnecessary flaw in our society.
Corporations and Washington legislators may point with helpless resignation
to the Biblical assertion that the poor will always be with us, but the
experience of other rich countries like Germany, France, Canada, and Britain
suggests that the answer lies less in Book of Matthew, and more in The
Congressional Record.

Ben H. Bagdikian

(Ben H. Bagdikian is the author of In the Midst of Plenty: The Poor in
America (Beacon Press, 1963), The Media Monopoly (6th Ed., 2000), and other
books. He also played a key role in obtaining and publishing portions of The
Pentagon Papers. He is the former Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism
at the University of California at Berkeley, and will appear as a featured
speaker at the 2001 North American Street Newspaper Association Annual
Conference July 26-29 at New College of California, San Francisco.)
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Poverty, the Law, and the Voices of People with Mental Illnesses

In every commentary that the SF Chronicle has recently printed in response
to their full-page editorial ³State of Neglect,² not once have they chosen
to reveal or discuss current laws in context with the issues of poverty and
wealth that govern involuntary psychiatric treatment and detention ‹ and the
lives and deaths of psychiatrically ill people in our state.

Current law (California Welfare and Institutions Codes 5150 et al) states
that a person can be involuntarily detained for 72 hours, then an additional
two weeks, then an additional three months, and then an additional year ‹ IF
they meet criteria for these kinds of detentions. Those criteria are: being
a danger to themselves or others, or gravely disabled. Grave disability is
defined as being unable to provide basic care for oneself (such as food,
clothing and shelter,) due to psychiatric illness. At any time during these
detentions if a physician feels that medications are warranted and the
patient refuses to take them, the physician can file for a Reese hearing,
citing the patient¹s lack of competency to make decisions and force the
patient to take the medicines.

So why are the people in Assemblymember Helen Thomson¹s camp agitating for
changes in the current laws?

Because the current laws are not being enforced.

Why?

Because it has been deemed too expensive to provide real care for the
psychiatrically ill, and the stigma of psychiatric illness has relegated
people with this condition to third-class status, and thus third-class
medical care.

It is far more difficult to get into any level of care at this point than it
is to buy alcohol, or street drugs, or a gun. The only way for an uninsured
mentally ill person who knows that they need to be in the hospital to be
hospitalized is to be involuntarily detained ‹ essentially allowing
themselves to be psychiatrically arrested. There are few if any beds for the
under- or un-insured, and only those that are required by law will receive
acute in-patient treatment.

If a person is so ill that they warrant a conservatorship (which would allow
the court to place them in a locked hospital for up to a year) there is a
waiting list that is 6 to 9 months long for placement. People who wait in
expensive acute care hospital beds are ³decertified² by California¹s
Medi-Cal system because they warrant a different level of care, and the
hospital is not reimbursed for their stay.

In San Francisco, people who cannot prove residency in this County for at
least one year are not eligible for this level of care. If the person is
homeless, there are few ways that they can prove such residency.

The only way that this same person can get into supported, subsidized
housing is to wait for 18 to 36 months on a list, then pray that when their
number does come up someone will come and find them to let them know ‹ and
that they are still alive and coherent for an interview where they may or
may not be accepted into that housing. There is nowhere for them to wait for
housing since all residential treatment programs have waiting lists, and
usually take people that have been hospitalized first.

The Chronicle completely overlooks the utter lack of affordable housing for
anyone making less than $28,000, which in San Francisco is considered ³low
income². People on SSI receive $9348.00 per year. The average hotel room on
6th St. rents for $140.00 per week, or $7560.00 per year, leaving only
$149.00 per month for food and everything else.

In order to get into a treatment program providing support with medications
and social services you have to became so crazy that you become
involuntarily hospitalized; even then there is no guarantee that you will
get anything other than a brief stay in a psychiatric emergency room and
handed a discharge disposition that reads ³released to the community² or
³released to independent living.² Both are euphemisms for dumped on the
streets.

There is no capacity in any of our treatment systems for people who need,
want and are seeking care, and are living and dying on the streets for lack
of it.

The only thing that would be solved by a change in the laws that govern
involuntary treatment would amount to a further ability to blame the patient
for their lack of compliance to a treatment system that does not exist.

How did this happen? It does go back to the Reagan years, both as Governor
and as President. It has to do with money, more than anything else. When
state hospitals were closed, money from the cost savings was supposed to
follow the patients released into the community. In San Francisco it did,
until 1979 when the so-called ³taxpayers revolt² (the Jarvis-Gain tax bill)
was enacted. Then there was no longer enough money in the State¹s coffers to
support public services. Services were cut, and ³life saving² services like
police, fire and emergency medical services were deemed more necessary than
treatment for mentally ill people. These cuts, once made, were irreversible.

Residential half-way houses cut their stays from 2 years to 3 months.
Outpatient clinics closed, residential treatment capacity was lost, and
housing became more expensive.

While Reagan was President these cuts continued, and during the Œ80s we lost
virtually our entire community treatment system.

In the Œ90s, due to lack of funds, the criteria for treatment became
extremely restricted, and the damage was further entrenched. People who
tried to get into treatment before they were in acute crisis warranting
involuntary hospitalization were routinely turned away from outpatient
clinics, and were given excuses like ³get treatment for your addiction
first, then we will treat your mental illness.²

There was no treatment for mentally ill people who were also addicted to
drugs or alcohol, who might need medicines to control symptoms of mental
illness like paranoia or delusions. The substance abuse treatment system was
based on a non-medical model that discouraged and condemned the use of any
drugs, prescribed or not. There was no way that a disorganized schizophrenic
or someone with bipolar disorder could survive this treatment system, much
less figure out how to get into it. The same cuts affected this systems
capacity in the same devastating ways as they had the mental health system.

So what is a person who hears voices that tell him that he should cut his
throat or kill the President to do? What is available in plentiful supply
and works briefly is alcohol and street drugs. Alcohol helps you fight the
chill of the street and make friends fast. Heroin is very useful for voices.
Speed can clear your mind temporality until you crash, and crack will allow
you to feel pleasure for the first time in your life, breaking through the
numbing despair of trauma and alienation that prevents feeling anything at
all... except fear.

In a horrible and prophetic bit of irony, the California Department of
Corrections had broader treatment criteria than the City and County of San
Francisco. This was only because of multiple lawsuits faced by the CDC
stemming from prisoner suicides.

Combined with racist mandatory sentencing laws, thus began the great
increase in California¹s prison population, and the bitter joke was born
that the only way to get treatment was to go to jail.

This continued until Œ96, when San Francisco¹s Community Mental Health
Services adopted a supposed ³Single Standard of Care². It was supposed to
ensure that all people, insured or not, would receive the same treatment.
What never happened was the allocation of adequate funds and increase of
resources, so the Single Standard of Care has become another cruel joke for
those poor and homeless people that need it most.

We are in this extraordinary debacle because of lack of political will,
which controls funding.

Mentally ill homeless people do not constitute a power base that can lobby
for funds that would make it possible to live healthy lives. No matter how
many times we go to the Mayor¹s office, or Sacramento, or Washington, we are
seen as brain damaged, feeble-minded, and therefore expendable. We are not,
and have never been a priority. This is the stigma that surrounds mental
illness.

There are always more pressing populations costing less to ³fix,² and that
will be more attractive on the evening news. We also represent a great fear
‹ the fear that any one of you could end up like us, and that there is no
cure for this most devastating and complex of conditions.

One in 5 of us will suffer from mental illness in our lifetimes.

Yet we are pitied, or hated, and routinely shunned ‹ especially those of us
most visible, forced to live publicly, and too poor to get any relief except
a crackpipe or a bottle of vodka. We are the living embodiment of a nation
that values property and wealth more than human life; then justifies this
with cynical ³bootstrap² theories fueled by fear, racism and ignorance,
rather than policies and funds to actually provide accessible, voluntary,
community-based treatment.

So before the SF Chronicle advocates for ³reforming our system² by changing
the laws that protect the already fragile civil rights of poor and mentally
ill citizens, it should take a hard look at what the reality of the current
laws are. They cannot be enforced because of the lack of capacity in all of
our treatment systems, and they turn away people in the thousands every
year. The only system that doesn¹t turn people away is our prisons.

Why? Because of money... or the supposed lack of it.

If this were any other devastating disease, like cancer or AIDS, there would
be a huge public outcry. It would be intolerable that people who have this
illness are forced to live and die on our streets, before our very eyes,
with the only hope of survival being incarceration.

For every story published of a grieving family member or someone forced into
treatment who is better off, we can tell you ten stories of people who have
been turned away, who have given up, or who have died. There are no real
stories on the criminal state of official neglect that has been in existence
for years. This neglect is not due to laws that protect the so-called civil
rights of mentally ill people; it is due to governmental indifference and
corporate greed.

³You have the right to live and die on the streets because it¹s easier to
blame you for your own condition than to admit that our health care system
and real estate market is governed by greed ‹ and YOU do not generate ANY
profit for US. Besides, you are smelly, scary and you don¹t vote. You barely
know what is happening to you or how to fight it, because you are too
consumed by your own illness to advocate for yourself effectively. So, in
order to appear like we care, we will change the laws and say that its for
your own good ‹ even though we know that you will not get any more treatment
because of the change in the law ‹ because we are unwilling to fund this for
you. And since we have now changed the laws, you are now guilty of not being
in treatment that does not exist, For breaking the law, you will go to the
place that does have room for you ‹ prison.²

Marykate Connor
Caduceus Outreach Services
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Two Flew Over the Cuckoo¹s Nest
      
There is no tyranny so great as that which is practiced for the benefit of
the victim.
    ‹ C.S. Lewis

It is a fact that most of California¹s social problems, especially those of
the underclass, have taken a back seat to a monumental governmental screw-up
‹ the energy thing.

However, to be forewarned is to be forearmed so I want to share with STREET
SHEET readers the contents of a bill currently before the assembly that
would provide yet another means to harass the disenfranchised. The strategy
‹ as I understand it ‹ is a clever, if devious, one: to get this bill passed
without its $50 million price tag so it will be on the books when and if
money becomes available.

So, here¹s the deal:

Now comes psychiatric nurse, Assemblymember Helen Thomson (AKA Nurse
Ratched) with her second attempt to allow preventive involuntary outpatient
psychiatric commitment (AB 1421). As an opening gambit and attempt at
mystification the bill¹s actual title is ³Assisted Outpatient Treatment² ‹ a
euphemism coined by Dr. E. Fuller (or Full-of-it?) Torrey¹s Treatment
Advocacy Center (TAC) in Arlington, Virginia. This Center, the National
Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) and pharmaceutical corporations have
mounted (read: financed) a nation-wide campaign to pass involuntary
(³assisted²) outpatient commitment bills.

Seemingly undaunted by last year¹s failure to pass Cuckoo¹s Nest One ‹ AB
1800 ‹ the indomitable Lady Thomson once again wants a much expanded group
of mind police to get after those nefarious psychiatric treatment (read
medication) evaders (the infamous ³non-compliant² persons). It is well known
that a large percentage of such persons are hiding out among the homeless.
It may seem heartless of me not to appreciate Nurse Thomson¹s good
intentions but given the level of mystification, distortion, and downright
human rights malevolence in this bill it seems time that a spade is called a
spade. For those of you fortunate enough to have not read it let me sketch
out what AB 1421 is REALLY about (remember, given the slippery state of
psychiatric diagnosis, being poor and homeless can nearly always be
associated with some kind of ³mental illness²):

It is about further loss of civil rights by persons labeled as being
mentally ill;

It is about loss of the freedom to choose by persons labeled as being
mentally ill;

It is about the loss of autonomy of persons labeled as being mentally ill;

It is about being coerced to accept treatment that persons labeled as being
mentally ill have no voice in designing and need not be seen or present when
the plan is made;

It is about forcing persons labeled as being mentally ill to take
mind-altering medications with known serious adverse effects that IMPEDE
recovery long term;

It is about multinational pharmaceutical corporations heaping profits from
their ever-expanding number of expensive new drugs that can be forcibly
administered ‹ in their own homes or on the street ‹ to persons labeled
mentally ill;

It is about needing psychic-like crystal ball powers of prediction of future
events (to allow preventive commitment) by a court or hearing officer;

It is about allowing persons labeled as being mentally ill to be removed
from their homes (if they are lucky enough to have one) and taken to a
mental hospital at the behest of nearly anyone;

It is about the potential end of trusting relationships with those closest
to them (relatives, friends and a variety of mental health workers) of
persons labeled mentally ill ‹ all of whom have the right to commit them;

It is ultimately about the deprivation of the basic human rights of persons
labeled mentally ill to assure that they remain marginalized, discriminated
against, powerless and dependent ‹mental illness-ism, an -ism as virulent as
the others ‹ racism, sexism etc.

As mentioned previously, this charmer of a bill carries a $50 million price
tag so it will not likely be funded in the current budget cycle. Still, I
like to think about what $50 million would do as $500 per month per person
housing vouchers? While no mathematician, my figures are a year¹s worth of
such vouchers for nearly 8500 folks. It¹s still only a drop in the bucket,
but a lot better way to spend tax dollars than on dehumanizing and
ineffective forced psychiatric outpatient treatment.

So, my friends, I believe it may be time to recall what a sanguine clergyman
‹ Pastor Martin Niemoller, 1892-1984 ‹ had to say:

In Germany, they first came for the Communists and I didn¹t speak up because
I wasn¹t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn¹t speak up because I wasn¹t a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn¹t speak up because I
wasn¹t in a union.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn¹t speak up because I was a
Protestant.

Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Dr. Loren Mosher

(Loren Mosher, M.D. is the former Clinical Director of the San Diego County
Mental Health and Clinical Professor of [voluntary] Psychiatry at UC San
Diego. This commentary is modified from a speech given in Sacramento at a
rally against AB1421 organized by the California Network of Mental Health
Clients.)
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4   €
United Nations Plaza is Now Under Martial Law

A monument stands in the middle of this urban open space with etched words
decrying civil and human rights abuses around the world. In the shadow of
this monument, San Francisco Police officers kick poor and homeless people¹s
rights to the curb. Officers come by foot, squad car, bicycle, motorcycle,
horse, and carry people away in police vans. Officers regularly engage in
racial profiling, economic profiling, unconstitutional searches, seizures
and interrogations, property rights violations and harassment. Mayor Willie
Brown has engaged in a campaign to make the plaza as people-unfriendly as
possible. Taken into context, it¹s more than fitting that the Unites States
was recently booted off the UN Human Rights Commission.

Once again, Mayor Willie Brown has rallied cops on overtime to remove
homeless people from sight. On April 28, in an attempt to expand San
Francisco¹s spatial apartheid, the Mayor had all benches in UN Plaza sawed
off at their bases and removed. According to at least one of the dozens of
police now permanently stationed at UN Plaza, it is illegal to sit anywhere
in UN Plaza now that the benches have been removed. The officer stated that
it is illegal to sit on the grass because signs say the lawns are closed for
maintenance. You can be cited for sitting on the low wall around the grass,
he says, because a sign says you can¹t. It is illegal to sit on the fountain
blocks because a sign says the fountain is off-limits. And if you want to
sit on the ground, on the bricks that cover the plaza, you are subject to a
camping citation ‹ even though most will agree it¹s a bullshit charge that
won¹t stand up in court. The ticket writing in UN Plaza now goes on
non-stop.

The not-really-so-very-honorable Mayor Willie Brown is the primary author of
this police state in UN Plaza. He has even attempted to create the
impression that it is in response to a hit-piece run by Channel 4 that
portrayed the plaza as an open-air crack den ‹ home to drug users, drug
dealers and violent characters. Brown maintains he was blithely unaware of
(or oblivious to) what was happening at UN Plaza, and now that he knows he¹s
taking action to clean things up. However, public documents obtained by the
Coalition on Homelessness show this to be still another load of the same
celebrated shit that Brown has recently been observed to be so full of.

Dept. of Public Works and Dept. of Recreation and Parks documents show that
the Mayor has been planning all this for quite some time. Since September
1999 he has been suggesting major changes to UN Plaza. He has been pushing
anti-people architecture changes, such as removing all 24 benches and
replacing the open lawns with fenced-in flower beds. Further, it was never
Mayor Brown¹s intent to address criminal activity in the plaza, the
documents show, but specifically to keep ³transients² away.

For example ‹ 12/27/00 DPW Memorandum: ³The benches are generally in good
condition, since they received maintenance as part of the 50th Anniversary
celebration. Benches are observed to be used exclusively by the transient
population that resides at the plaza, as well as is the ground plane.
Removal of the benches would make the plaza less comfortable for transients.
It is debatable if bench removal would improve or deteriorate comfort levels
for all other plaza users.² The week before the bench removal, City
departments ran the final bench-removal plans past George Smith, Director of
the Mayor¹s Office on Homelessness.

So, let¹s be clear. The Mayor schemed the police takeover of UN Plaza for
over a year, and the anti-human architecture specifically to eliminate
homeless people from sight. He then used the media to create the illusion
that he was doing it to attack drug activity and violence in UN Plaza,
thereby garnering public sympathy for his inhumane acts.

Homeless people, people with disabilities, seniors, advocates, providers and
other community members are furious about the situation in UN Plaza.
³Removing the benches is unfair and unjust,² remarked one homeless person in
the plaza. ³Some of us from the shelter used to come down to the benches in
the morning to drink coffee and read the paper, but now we can¹t sit
anywhere,² another told us. Seniors have spoken out against the bench
removal as well. ³I can¹t sit anywhere down here,² declared one senior
activist. ³I¹ve been told you can rest on your laurels, but I don¹t exactly
know what a Œlaurel¹ is. Maybe Willie Brown can come and tell me so I can
sit down and enjoy the plaza.²

The long-term plans to change UN Plaza into a people-free zone include:
removing benches (completed 4/28); replacing open lawn space with fenced-in
flower beds; removing or altering the fountain to keep people from sitting
near it; removing the statue of Simon Bolivar and the seating steps around
it; and installing ³light cannons² to shoot ³intense² light onto the plaza.

The total cost? Over 5 million dollars, and that doesn¹t include police
overtime for Œround-the-clock harassment.

It¹s yet another summer rerun of the same old bullshit story ‹ don¹t address
the core causes of homelessness, but instead call in the cops, destroy
public space, do anything you can to move homeless people out of sight...

then deny that the problem even exists.
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5   €
WILLIE BROWN¹S CIVIC PLAYGROUND

When anarchist activists with San Francisco Food Not Bombs were recently
arrested it was not simply because they were violating a 1988 court order
banning the free distribution of food to homeless people in UN Plaza. SFFNB
has routinely distributed their free hot veggie soups for many days in the
Plaza undisturbed by the Police. Rather, the reason for the sudden
harassment and crackdown on the servings were for political and economic
causes.

As part of Mayor Willie Brown¹s self-informed ³vision² for San Francisco,
the City has embarked on an agenda of turning districts and neighborhoods
into exclusive-use zones for the rich and privileged. Most notably in the
Mission District, Mayor Brown sought to lure rich dot-com marketing types to
the ethnically Latino district. Of course this would increase the City¹s tax
revenue and generate an inflationary real estate market, from which the City
would also benefit through property taxes. One wonders what exactly the
Mayor meant in a meeting with community members by noting that ³poor² people
have found new lodgings in the suburbs. Perhaps, that is the mayor¹s wish to
supplant the working poor in San Francisco with moneyed yuppies from Silicon
Valley.

In his drive to create a new San Francisco, the Mayor¹s latest stop is to
embark on creating a lavish playground for the elites in our society. Down
the walkway from Broadway Show Theatres, the Symphony, the Opera and most
importantly the mayor¹s own lavishly redecorated City Hall, which hosts
receptions for the well off and the dot-com-latelies. I myself dined at such
a fete during the boom, while immediately adjacent is the poor working-class
and mostly immigrant neighborhood of the Tenderloin. So what is it that the
Mayor doesn¹t like about exiting the Opera to see just beyond his luminous
golden dome of the City Hall the squalor of the poor in the Tenderloin? Is
it the fact that after several years as mayor and spending several hundred
million on gentrification programs the Mayor has yet to address directly or
in real terms the plight of the homeless or poor in San Francisco. What
better way to alleviate such a miserable inability at real solutions than
sweep it away with the force of police and public works trucks? An entire
neighborhood is written off as a ³redesign² for ³renewal.² And where better
to start this endeavor to clear the poor blight of the Tenderloin than in UN
Plaza, where homeless and poor people gather during the day in clear view of
the train-riding tourists.

But the Mayor had a problem. He knew if he tried to change UN Plaza he
wouldn¹t have public support. After the Mission fiasco, after spending
millions on the Embarcadero people would ask, ³Why UN Plaza? It is already
designed this is where we hold our public rallies, this is where we have
Fiesta Cinco de Mayo, why would the Mayor want to change an area recently
redesigned at a cost of millions?²

How was Willie Brown going to solve this public relations problem and
rationalize spending more money to get his personal playground in order?

Enter Willie the social engineer.

WILLIE BROWN ‹ SOCIAL ENGINEERING CORRUPTION
Social engineering is the ancient craft of making people think you are doing
one thing and getting them to help you ‹ while you are actually using them
to get what you really want. As a career politician, Willie Brown has a
Ph.D. in Social Engineering. It must have been very easy for the Mayor¹s
office to ask Vic Lee of KRON-TV to generate consent for the Mayor¹s plan by
doing an exposé on homeless people in UN Plaza - and in that exposé
highlight each of the areas the Mayor wanted to change in the Plaza,
including getting rid of the homeless population.

How better to do this than to portray the homeless as criminals and beggars?

As most people are aware, on April 28th in the middle of the night all the
benches in UN Plaza were torn out by the Dept. of Public Works. Never mind
the workers being called in during the middle of their weekend, in what
appeared to be a hastily designed plan to punish the poor, elderly and
homeless people in the Plaza. The Mayor¹s office officially responded to the
bench removal as ³in response² to KRON¹s report that Friday night. However,
we now know that the benches were scheduled for removal far in advance to
the KRON report.

Let¹s take a look at what KRON was saying and what the Mayor had proposed as
his personal playground.

In documents obtained by the Coalition on Homelessness through a Public
Records Act request we learn that the actual plan to redesign the Plaza to
the Mayor¹s liking was first drawn up in 1999. The Mayor rejected the
initial plan as he asked the city planners to develop a plan according to
his own personal proposals:
        1. Remove the plaza benches
        2. Remove the plaza fountain
        3. Install light cannons
        4. Install a playground

Interestingly, the anatomy of the KRON report highlighted each of these
proposals by showing the ³social² problems in the Plaza. The KRON report
shows some drug users smoking crack on the plaza benches, people urinating
behind the fountain, a homeless encampment, homeless people sleeping in the
plaza and children going through the plaza with their guardians in proximity
to drug users and the homeless people. Is it a coincidence that the KRON
report would give credence to each of the Mayor¹s proposals for his personal
playground while ignoring the facts: that many of the homeless people there
are mentally ill; they do not have access to treatment on demand; they have
no place to bathe; and the only latrine they can use does not work ‹ even
though we tax payers have already been billed for it?

REDOING A PLAZA ALREADY DONE, AT WHAT COSTS?
According to a memorandum dated December 27, 2000 from Judi Mosqueda,
Project Manager for the Department of Public Works, to Harlan Kelly, the
proposed changes to the Plaza for each of the mayor¹s proposals would tally:

Removal of benches
(and replacement with single seat backless chairs) = $136,000
Removal of the fountain = $1,000,000
Install light cannons = $1,875,000
Install playground = $300,000
GRAND TOTAL TO TAXPAYERS: $3,311,000

What could be the rationalization for such an expenditure? The Mayor states
he wants to replace the fountain at $1,000,000 while not even making an
effort to fix the forever broken at the Plaza. City planners write, ³...the
fountain has functional, maintenance, and social-use issues... The fountain
is currently being used as a latrine and bath for the homeless community
that occupies the plaza²

They go on to write, interestingly in terms of generating public support,
³The removal of the fountain will be a source of public debate for two key
reasons. The fountain the handiwork of world-renowned landscape architect,
Lawrence Halprin. Additionally, San Francisco fountain enthusiasts actively
fight to retain fountains in the City, regardless of their functional or
aesthetic characteristics.²

Apparently, the emphasis placed on the fountain by KRON was to generate
consent to dismantle the fountain, a work of art. While there is still no
plan to provide Plaza users with any bathrooms or running water whether the
are opera goers or homeless.

The Mayor¹s proposals are interesting in how they frame the argument for
renovating the plaza. In several instances the plan panders to increasing
privileged use of UN Plaza to the detriment of poor and homeless people:

³Taking the Mayor¹s idea, it can also make the plaza as brightly lit at
night as it is during the day, making the plaza an uncomfortable sleeping
area.²
‹ Proposed Plan of Action, March 7, 2001

³...the plaza an uncomfortable place to hang out at night or act as a
nighttime attraction, bringing people from adjacent nighttime venues to the
plaza ‹ Orpheum, ballet, opera house, symphony hall, civic auditorium.²
‹ Proposed Plan of Action, March 7, 2001

WILLIE BOMBS FOOD
The entire plaza redesign will be in three stages. An unwritten part of the
plan is the harassment of service providers to the homeless in the Plaza,
such as Food Not Bombs. It is interesting to note that when the redesign
plan was first conceived in September of 1999 at the impetus of the Business
Improvement District that Food Not Bombs volunteers were arrested for
serving food to homeless people shortly thereafter. And it is not by
coincidence that once the Mayor had social engineered public consent through
KRON-TV that more Food Not Bombs volunteers were arrested for serving food
to homeless people in UN Plaza. Clearly, as the phased redesign takes shape
and as we are just in the first phase more harassment of Food Not Bombs
volunteers and other service providers in the Plaza will occur. And at what
cost, to pay for a multi-million dollar redesign of an already fashionably
designed Plaza, instead of investing in the social infrastructure of San
Francisco and alleviating the pain of homeless people who occupy the plaza
(since there are no shelter spaces left as San Francisco¹s homeless
population reaches 11,000 people).

If Mayor Brown and the Business Improvement District have their way we will
be in for a dramatic increase in the homeless population as the Tenderloin
is next on the gentrification trail. Where will the poor and working class
people of the Tenderloin go when they are booted out of their spaces for the
luxurious lifestyles of the new rich?

Certainly not at UN Plaza. It is now closed for redecorating.

SALIM MCCARRON
SAN FRANCISCO FOOD NOT BOMBS
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6   €
Fight The Cuts! A Draft Housing Platform for America

Through both Democratic and Republican administrations, this country has
gradually abandoned its¹ commitment to providing a housing safety net. The
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has slowed the
production of new, additional units of housing to a near halt. Public
Housing policy has been a disaster and may opportunities for revitalization
without displacement have been wasted altogether. To live in public housing
now means being subject to evictions for crimes someone else committed.
While the supply of housing has shrunk thanks to the federal government;
immigrant tenants, a tiny minority in the system are scapegoated as
³stealing² housing from native-born tenants.

Even HUD has finally admitted that the housing crisis is indeed national,
and that homelessness is (gasp!) primarily caused by a lack of housing.

One of George W. Bush¹s first acts of office was to propose a federal
housing budget with some of the cruelest cuts yet-which will guarantee more
homelessness and deterioration of our cities.

We say that the time is ripe for a new housing movement-taking inspiration
from the fight of organized labor is the 1930¹s. Please read this draft
housing platform and take the time to add your suggestions. When completed,
it will become a guide for our future organizing advocacy and coalition
work.

A Million New Homes
The money which was once spent to increase the supply of affordable housing
has shrunk dramatically through several administrations. Without new housing
production that is truly affordable to all in need, we have no hope of
solving our nationwide housing crisis.

€    We demand a national housing trust fund to build a million new homes
nationwide. Funding for such an effort could come from the interest on
existing Federal Home Administration home mortgage loans. Two solid
proposals already exist for such a trust; one from the National Housing
Institute and the other from the National Coalition on Homelessness.

Revitalization from Below,
Don¹t Displace Communities
Anyone who has ever lived in or around public housing would agree that it
must be revitalized. We believe that communities and buildings can be
rebuilt with and for the benefit of present communities. However, the HOPE
VI program has not yielded these results. Often times, reconstruction on
developments are delayed for many years. Overly strict credit checks can
prevent tenants from returning.

Nationally, the HOPE VI program of demolition and revitalization of public
housing has helped to dramatically decrease the amount of low-income
housing. At least 23,000 homes will never be replaced. (Shelterforce
March/April 1999)  This is part of a conservative effort, aided by many
Democrats, to dismantle the housing safety-net and eliminate federal
spending on this human service.

Many thousands of tenants¹ project-based Section 8 developments are at risk
of displacement due to expiring contracts and ³opting-out² of the contracts
by landlords.
€   Congress must put in place one-for-one replacement requirements of all
HOPE VI projects!
€   When a broad section of tenants organize, cooperative ownership should
be allowed; but not as an excuse for cutting the federal housing budget.
€   Housing Authorities must demonstrate that they have the funding and the
plan to complete the HOPE VI project before they are allowed to relocate any
tenant.
€   Repeal the landlord priviledge of early ³opt-outs² of Section 8
contracts.

Repeal ³One Strike!²
The 1996 ³One Strike and You¹re Out!² law was supported by many public
housing residents; weary of crime. However, since the law allows tenants to
be evicted for other people¹s crimes, many are now viewing it as a violation
of their constitutional rights. Across the country, there have been stories
of grandparents evicted for relative¹s crimes, women evicted after reporting
domestic violence incidents and encounters with security guards and police,
where no crime occurred resulting in evictions.

€    We demand that ³One Strike!² be revoked a just and safe evictions
policy does not punish people for crimes they never committed.
€    All public housing residents should have the right to try to resolve
their evictions through an uniform grievance policy before they get to
court.

Stop the Attack on Immigrants
Many immigrant communities (Latino, Chinese, Russian) depend on subsidized
housing for shelter. These communities are not responsible for the national
housing shortage, yet the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of
1998 now disqualifies immigrants from federal programs.

€    We demand that the immigrant exclusion requirements be revoked
immediately.
€    We demand that HUD discontinue requiring local Housing Authorities to
report citizenship status with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Exits From Homelessness
At one point, Federally-subsidized housing actually helped families wishing
to exit homelessness. Now, thanks to Quality Housing and Work Responsibility
Act of 1998, a family must make 30% of an areas median income to access
these programs.

Federal housing programs must include very-low income families and
individuals and the working poor.

As mentioned earlier, this draft platform needs your feedback. We need
tenants of subsidized housing, front-line service providers, affordable
housing providers, union members and working people of all sorts.

    Send Feedback to:
    COH Housing Workgroup
    468 Turk St. SF, CA 94102
    or
    housingworkgroup@yahoo.com
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7   €
The Day of a Homeless Family

Bury alive in the place of the system.
Chains of what we call events.
Stress is the cause but never recognized in the
oppression we call a system.
Yet when I wakeup and have no place to stay
I sweat and sweat because now I have to make that call
not knowing the answer to my destiny.
I¹m on the run from the System of what is now my life,
will they take my kids,?
This question is uncertain to me
because this can be my reality,
you got to move in a way
not being notice by the public at large
For this is the way we live for now.
I trying so hard to find a solution and all we get is a bandage.
No problem solving,
No that¹s not an option for us.
The cycle must continue.
Our denial of our own space as people has been
taken away,
The journey of being disconnected from what is a oppression has began.
In the form of taking away our dreams.
Having our space in this place of madness
The illusion of what use to be my life
has all but shatter into peace¹s of glass
I have a family of the unknown and unwanted rejects
by the oppression that has me by the throat,
I¹m still me and that¹s all that matters.
In this imitation of what people of society calls life.
I ask myself when dose the struggle end ?
Or is this a curse of the unknown.
In my world this is life.

Bianca Henry
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8   €
Shelter Redesign Update

Since STREET SHEET last covered shelter redesign, some progress has been
made. The City has agreed not to house an additional 100 men at MSC South  ‹
squeezed onto the second floor like a can of sardines (this was only due to
fire regulations). People also won¹t have to sleep upright in plastic
chairs, thanks to staff and homeless peoples¹ protest in front of City Hall
‹ a small but worthwhile victory. The bad news is that the shelter system
will house fewer men and women than before, and that most of the rest of the
City plan remains unchanged. MSC North, for example, will still be turned
into a transitional housing program to be called Next Door. The deadline for
this is still July, 16. However, the City has agreed (after urging from the
policy committee of the local board) to allow public access to their
previously closed, elitist meetings ‹ called the ³pathways² meetings ‹ to
further discuss the shelter redesign (call us for details). They are either
finally willing to listen or they finally realize we aren¹t going anywhere.

Nobody is opposed to creating transitional shelter; as long as it actually
transitions into housing, and offers as many choices as possible to homeless
people. In fact, we believe people¹s right to decision making and having
that impact policy of services meant to adress human needs is essential to
solving homelessness. Creating unity among poor folk and lessening the
divide between ³staff² and ³client² status is our vision for a functional,
safe, and respectful community.

Since the ³voluntary² case management services at MSC North (which are
actually mandatory, but termed voluntary because you can choose not to
participate in them by going somewhere else, i.e. the streets) will be the
only option at this shelter created in response to the natural disaster of
the loma prieta earthquake, some ten years ago, has somehow failed to
address the seemingly obvious solution to homelessness: homes.

To find out what the homeless people themselves wanted changed, the
Coalition surveyed 400 people living both in shelters and on the street. It
is worth recapping our findings.

The thing homeless people liked most about the shelter was that it was a
place to go to get off the street (78%). But, almost 1 in 4 homeless people
liked absolutely nothing about the shelters (22%),

Asked what they liked least about shelter, the most common complaints were
the staff, the filthy and inadequate facilities, and the constant noise.

We asked them what homeless people wanted out of the shelters. These were
the most common responses:
€    People wanted the rules enforced fairly.
€    They wanted flexible exit and entry
€    They wanted simplified access
€    They wanted comprehensive services
€    They wanted a homelike environment

We asked people what they needed to leave homelessness; Housing and jobs
were the most common responses.

With its new Next Door program, the City has tried to address some of these
concerns (the few the powers that be deemed legitimate), while ignoring
others, like permanent housing and easier access to shelters, services, and
housing. In fact, MSC South will no longer have referrals for the
master-leased housing run by City, Inc. ‹ a rare option on SRO stock
affordable to people on GA, PAES, SSI, etc. The reasoning and logic behind
the City¹s decision for this is that they have decided that people who will
stay here are ³not housing ready².

Staff at Next Door will receive additional training in ³sensitivity² to
cultural and mental health issues. Each resident will get more personal
space and a comprehensive ring of services from typing to mental health will
be available under one roof, as well as all the resources to any kind of
permane